Tree, I don't remember any Hogwash coming from the developer, he's never "promised" any release date.

Oleg first brought BOB to our attention back in 2004/5 with a "possible" release of end of 2005.

At some point they realised the IL-2 engine wasn't capable of what they wanted to achieve with BOB and started the SOW engine build.

At the same time the third party needed help to finish Pacific Fighters. This left a skeleton crew working on the SOW engine, objects, maps, and features.

I don't remember the exact dates but about this time the publisher UBIsoft announced the release date of the end of 2006? This was never verified by the developer and UBI has never said a word since. From your investigation into the matter, they may no longer be the publisher.

I don't know if they realized the SOW wasn't possible on 2007 computers, or there were still monies to be made with the IL-2 series, but they conscentrated their work on paid addons until the last addon IL-2 1946 was completed.

So basicly the full development crew has only worked on SOW for the last couple of years, and the sales of the addons have helped finance full work on the SOW series.

Again, anyone who has ever developed anything slightly complicated knows that its impossible to give a definite timetable. Oleg learned that lesson early in the IL-2 develpment and always tried to prefaced his comments with the word "hope".

At the Birmingham interview Oleg said he expected a release in Q4 2007, but that's just history. The main thing is its still being worked on.

I seem to remember him saying that Tree, I'm sure he had hopes of just that, but they carried on developing addons for the Il-2 series. I can speculate, but I don't pretend to know all the difficulties that lent them to conscentrate on one particular development over another, but we know it wasn't just to screw us around. I'm sure they have other higher priorities than to to play that game.

I think that they doing their very best, and looking forward to a release as soon as possible...very complex, so much to do, most likely wishing the work load would end soon..and I bet very tired, but excited at what the world will soon see

Well said. Agreed 100%


I also think that he said he WANTED the game out Q4 2007. The same way he said he wanted and needed it to be released Q4 2008.

But things never turn out the way you plan them, especially not with such an unique project.

With the statement that work on BoB started in 2007, I guess it will be fair to assume that these videoes from 2006 has very little to do with what we will be seeing in the end.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...42114309&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...99853180&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...44801294&hl=en

But nevertheless, it seems to me like they had stuff like flightmodels, cockpits, dynamic weathersystems, squadron-size takeoff etc up and going allready in 2006. That's not bad for not even having really started working yet.

In 2007, SaQSoN or Luthier (don't remember wich, and can not find the post) said that 1C could not afford NOT to release the game in 2008. Such a statement would normally indicate that the product in 2007 was in it final stage. If they had only started working in 2007, that's a little short funding for such a complex product.

The thing that Oleg said in December that he hoped to have the SoW:BOB site up and running around the end of December is another weird mismatch between what he says and what we see.

Most of all this wondering going on stems from Olegs own statements. And I really don't think he is trying to confuse us on purpose! No other game-developer has treated his customers as nicely as Oleg has done with the IL-2 series! So all these confuseing signals are making me really puzzled.

Skarphol

100% +1 , and here was me thinking i was the only one that had noticed.

up!

\,,/,

Well, that's where Oleg is in a lose-lose-lose situation.

- If he says nothing about release-dates and estimations, especially in this forum SoW is declared as vapour-ware, Oleg is flamed for lack of information and threads demanding information fill the board.
- If he posts his estimates, he "puzzles" people, because they take his estimates for dates written in stone and personal promises. But nobody ever did such a tremendous project, nobody had such variables as third-party modellers, texturers and researchers, as well as other dev-teams joining his own.
- If he'd post a date he could surely hold, a LOT of people would get pretty p*ssed. Lets take the interview for example. He said that IL2 took 4 years to develop, SoW so far only 2 as a dedicated project and with the setting of making it a standalone game. Realistically considering the complexity of IL2 and SoW, a secure estimate would be 2011-2013.
Who here would not be disappointed, if this was posted, even if Oleg knew it would be released much earlier than that?

Why is it so hard to understand that a portion of the team has been working on BOB SOW starting probably before 2004. with large periods of that time taken up by work on IL-2 addons. Of course they would be things accomplished by a small team otherwise we wouldn't have seen any updates over the last 4 or 5 years. The fact remains the full development team didn't go full steam ahead until IL-2 1946 was completed.

You gotta stop looking at everything as Black and White. Life is mostly shades of grey. I'm not sure how much of their work was lost when they shifted to the SOW engine, as some of the early BOB updates may have been done on the old IL-2 engine.